Category Archives: Colombia

True Stories: Spaces review – impressive short docs from folk horror to a Lebanese marvel

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This short film collection from the True Story platform ranges across continents to look at how we interact with our environments

Deeply psychogeographical, this collection of documentary shorts from the streaming platform True Story roams among spaces old and new, and across continents. Personal and public memories are intertwined, creating portraits of how human beings interact with their environments, and vice versa.

Paul Heintz’s nocturnal Shānzhài Screens is a meditative study of liminal urban spaces, shot in a Chinese district that specialises in fine-art reproductions. Rectangular frames populate the screen, from flickering apartment windows, hurried video calls, to endless replicas of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Authenticity is elusive, and loneliness reigns.

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‘If I go back, I’ll die’: Colombian town scrambles to accommodate 10,000 migrants

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Necoclí, population 20,000, faces bottleneck as Covid rules lift and unrest, poverty and violence grow across region


When the loudspeaker announced that the day’s last boat across Colombia’s Gulf of Urabá would begin boarding, a desperate scrum of Haitians rushed forward, jostling for spaces on the rickety craft.

Most had been stuck in this remote Caribbean coastal town for days, trapped in a migration bottleneck caused by the loosening of Covid travel restrictions and growing unrest, poverty and violence across the region.

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Colombian top general Mario Montoya faces murder charges in ‘false positives’ scandal

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Uribe’s ‘hero of the homeland’ is alleged to have overseen the abduction and execution of up to 104 civilians – including five children

Gen Mario Montoya was the star soldier who oversaw the defeat of Latin America’s most powerful insurgency, a US-trained professional hailed for turning around a demoralized army and masterminding a string of brutal strikes against Colombia’s leftist guerrillas.

After taking command of the South American country’s army in 2006, he regularly appeared on television news, the face of a modern military who even spoke the language of human rights.

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Amnesty condemns Colombia police brutality after scores of protesters killed

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‘He died as he lived, resisting’, says mother of young artist killed in Cali, as report claims authorities used systematic ‘pattern of violence’ in city

Nicolás Guerrero, a 26-year-old artist from the Colombian city of Cali, took to the streets on 2 May to protest against the lack of opportunities he saw in his country. He had a family in Spain that he had hoped one day to bring to South America. But later that night, after riot police launched a brutal crackdown, he was found lying on the pavement, seriously wounded. He died hours later in hospital.

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Refugees hit hardest as deadly floods sweep across continents

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Death toll rises as storms continue to rip through communities, destroying homes and livelihoods

As heavy rains and floods dominate headlines around the world, displaced people and those living in conflict zones are among the worst affected.

Wind and heavy rain from monsoons and typhoons has bombarded much of Asia. There have also been downpours and flash floods in parts of Latin America and Africa.

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Floods block food from reaching thousands of refugees in Colombia

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Families fleeing drug gangs and paramilitaries have been cut off, with government accused of being ‘incapable’ of protecting them

Flooding and landslides have left thousands of refugees cut off from food supplies in Ituango, the conflict-strewn municipality in north-western Colombia.

Roads have been blocked by mud and debris after heavy rains, while helicopters have been unable to land. As a result, the delivery of food and medical supplies has been stymied, and communications cut off.

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‘I’m not alone’: survivors organise against sexual violence in Colombia

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Despite death threats, gangs and guerrilla warfare, a network of women are determined to help others recover from rape and domestic abuse

Children now play football on the field where the lives of the people of El Salado changed completely.

In February 2000, about 450 paramilitary fighters stormed this small Colombian town. They forced people from their homes into the field, and began to play drums and drink alcohol stolen from local shops. They then went on to torture and kill. Yirley Velasco was one of those gang-raped. She was 14 at the time.

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Luz: The Flower of Evil review – arty horror strangely mutes its women

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Colombian horror about a micro-cult is rather too fascinated by the barbarity of its leader, rather than the daughters he has hidden from the world

This bold and disturbing arthouse horror from first-time feature director Juan Diego Escobar Alzate feels like it could be set sometime in the 19th century. It’s about a tiny religious cult based in the wildly beautiful Colombian mountains: the group’s leader is El Señor (Conrado Osorio), a farmer who looks like a cowboy in the Clint Eastwood mould, with a macho growl; his trio of daughters wear frontier prairie dresses. But we must be closer to the present day: in an early scene the eldest, 23-year-old Laila (Andrea Esquivel), brings him a 1980s cassette player that she has found in the woods and she is spellbound by this unknown contraption. El Señor says the devil lurks inside.

It’s an intriguing set-up, and cinematographer Nicolás Caballero Arenas shoots the lush landscape through what looks like a trippy filter; blazing sunsets and garish rainbows give the film a quasi-fairytale, almost surreal feel. El Señor has raised his daughters in total ignorance of the world outside their community of a dozen or so. But the film is depressingly thin on the women; often it seems more interested in arranging them in arty tableaux than investigating the way that isolation has shaped their personalities and how they see the world. The wafty Terrence Malick-ish voiceover written for Laila doesn’t exactly fill in the psychological gaps.

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Colombia under fire for backing Cuba protests while stifling dissent at home

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Government calls for freedom of expression in Cuba as police mount brutal response to local activists

Colombia’s government has been accused of hypocrisy after calling for solidarity with protesters in Cuba even as it cracks down harshly on mass demonstrations against economic inequity and human rights abuses.

Colombia is bracing for another round of anti-poverty demonstrations and unrest, with large marches planned for Tuesday 20 July, Colombia’s independence day, after taking a monthlong hiatus during a surge in Covid-19 cases.

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Marcus Rashford mural and Cuba protests: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Turkey to Colombia

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The assassination of Haiti’s leader remains shrouded in mystery: ‘We may never know’

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Authorities are still struggling to understand the motives and masterminds behind the first killing of a Haitian president since 1915

Giovanna Romero remembers her husband, Mauricio, as a caring father who called home every night when he was out of the country on work. He did so as usual on the night of 6 July – from where, exactly, she isn’t sure – to remind her and their children he loved them and tell them to take care.

“I’ll call again soon,” the retired Colombian soldier promised – a pledge he would be unable to keep.

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Haiti police say murder suspect is middleman living in Florida

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Items found at Christian Emmanuel Sanon’s house include bullets, gun parts and US drug agency hat

Police in Haiti say the latest suspect arrested in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse is a Haitian living in Florida who acted as a middleman between the alleged hitmen and the plot’s unnamed masterminds.

The suspect was identified by police as Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian in his 60s living in Florida who describes himself as a doctor and has accused his homeland’s leaders of corruption.

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Doubts raised about who was behind the assassination of Haiti’s president

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Police claims that Jovenel Moïse was killed by a mainly Colombian hit squad thrown into doubt

Questions have been raised over Haiti’s official narrative for the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moïse, who was gunned down at his mansion in Port-au-Prince last Wednesday.

Haitian police and the politicians who stepped into the political vacuum created by Moïse’s killing have claimed he was shot at about 1am by members of a predominantly Colombian hit squad who had stormed the president’s hillside residence. “Foreigners came to our country to kill the president,” police chief Léon Charles alleged after the shooting.

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Why were Colombian guns for hire allegedly key to Haiti assassination plot?

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The hit squad that killed President Jovenel Moïse is alleged to be largely drawn from veterans of Colombia’s civil conflicts

When Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín jetted into Punta Cana’s tourist-clogged airport early last month on Avianca Flight 252, immigration officials are unlikely to have given the 41-year-old Colombian a second glance. Visitors from around the globe flock to this Dominican resort town each week in search of sun, sea and Caribbean sands.

Grosso appears to have had rather different plans, though: to sneak over the border into neighbouring Haiti and help assassinate that country’s president.

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‘A world problem’: immigrant families hit by Covid jab gap

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Families spread across rich and poor countries are acutely aware of relatives’ lack of access to vaccine

For months she had been dreaming of it and finally Susheela Moonsamy was able to do it: get together with her relatives and give them a big hug. Throughout the pandemic she had only seen her siblings, nieces and nephews fully “masked up” at socially distanced gatherings. But a few weeks ago, as their home state of California pressed on with its efficient vaccination rollout, they could have a proper reunion.

“It was such an emotional experience, we all hugged each other; and with tears in our eyes, we thanked God for being with us and giving us the opportunity to see each other close up again and actually touch each other,” she says. “We never valued a hug from our family members that much before.”

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Climate crisis ‘may put 8bn at risk of malaria and dengue’

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Reducing global heating could save millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, study finds

More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated, a new study says.

Malaria and dengue fever will spread to reach billions of people, according to new projections.

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‘I just need my son’: the people who disappeared amid Colombia’s protests

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Seventy-seven people have vanished since the start of the unrest in late April – some protesters, others not linked to the demonstrations

Before 17-year-old Duvan Barros left his home in a downtrodden neighbourhood in Bogotá to attend an anti-poverty demonstration, he asked his mother, Dolores Barros, to make him a fruit juice. She said no, but there would be one waiting when he got back.

That was 5 June, and Barros hasn’t seen him since.

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Colombian court accuses soldiers of murdering at least 120 civilians

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Military also accused of disappearing 24 people and presenting them as guerrilla fighters as part of false positives scandal

A Colombian court has accused 10 members of the military and a civilian of forcibly disappearing 24 people and murdering at least 120 civilians and falsely presenting them as guerrilla fighters who had been killed in combat.

Related: The ‘false positives’ scandal that felled Colombia’s military hero

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‘I didn’t eat for days’: hunger stalks Venezuelan refugees

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Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns

A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.

The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.

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Offsets being used in Colombia to dodge carbon taxes – report

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Fossil fuel levy can be avoided by buying carbon offsets that may have no benefit for climate

Forest protection carbon offsets that may have no benefit to the climate have been used by polluters to avoid paying carbon taxes in Colombia, according to a report.

In 2016, a levy of about $5 (£3.60) was introduced in the South American country to cover the use of some fossil fuels. However, companies that emit carbon dioxide can avoid paying the tax by buying carbon offsets from Colombian emission reduction projects, including those that conserve threatened natural carbon banks such as peatlands, forests and mangrove swamps.

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